by Dennis Foley
The voice over the public address system changed again to the American lieutenant who spoke enthusiastically. “And General Devlen is proud to be able to also award to Colonel Pascoe the American Army’s Silver Star Medal.”
Another medal? Pascoe couldn’t believe it. A Silver Star? He was floored by the announcement. It was what he came to Vietnam for, recognition, contradictory evidence of his worth to overcome the single bad efficiency report he had received. He watched Devlen repeat the process Pham had just finished. Devlen plucked the medal from the board and pinned it to Pascoe’s shirt pocket next to the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross. He then stepped back and stood silently while the voice over the speakers finished reading the citation in English. “… for gallantry in action involving close combat with an armed hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam. Lieutenant Colonel Pascoe distinguished himself by heroism while participating in aerial flight as the pilot of a helicopter under intense and sustained enemy fire….”
Pascoe was stunned by the moment—being recognized by both the U.S. Army and the Republic of Vietnam for heroism in combat.
He listened as the voice finished the citation. “… making repeated attempts to extract encircled friendly elements under heavy and sustained enemy fire. His courage and selfless devotion to duty reflects great credit upon himself, Military Assistance Command and the United States Army.” He knew those words were forever permanent and would soon be part of his record at the Pentagon. The citations would surely be there before the next lieutenant colonel’s promotion board would meet. And the citations would certainly be accompanied by an impressive efficiency report from General Devlen. After all, how could the general award him a Silver Star and not also write him an outstanding efficiency report?
Though they had gotten off on the wrong foot, Pascoe was determined to impress the general with his performance of duty in the time he had left in the advisory team. Doing so would be sure to influence the general to write an impressive efficiency report on him to go along with his two medals for heroism in combat. It would be insurance.
The presentations complete, Pascoe saluted the three generals and the music started up again with a bang.
The generals and Pascoe returned to the reviewing stand where all four stood shoulder to shoulder facing the troops. The Vietnamese Officer standing in front of the formation, the Commander of Troops, yelled out the series of commands to get the troops to shoulder their rifles, then turn, then step off in a column to perform the age-old custom of passing in review.
With the first step, the band in front of the column started playing another selection more appropriate for soldiers to march to at exactly one-hundred and twenty steps per minute.
Pascoe wanted to look down at the two new medals pinned on to his shirt but resisted the urge. He stood stiffly and proudly next to the three generals while they all watched the Commander of Troops maneuver the long column of companies into two left turns lining them up with a path taking them all past the front of the reviewing stand to render honors to the VIPs.
Daylight finally filtered into the trees concealing Scotty and Nguyen. Before Scotty did anything else he moved to all four margins of the thicket binoculars to look for any signs of enemy forces still in the area.
That done without seeing any indication the Viet Cong were near, Scotty returned to Nguyen. As he crawled back to the captain’s position he wasn’t looking forward to what he would find in the daylight. Scotty knew he was in a really bad situation. Something told him not to expect choppers to come looking for them after days of waiting. If they hadn’t already tried to pick them up there was little chance they were coming at all. He had to assume they thought he and Nguyen were dead or captured. What else would explain the lack of effort to rescue them?
He reached Nguyen’s side. “How you doing, Dai Uy?”
Nguyen’s color was pale. His breathing was shallow and he was perspiring heavily. Not something Scotty was used to seeing from a local. They always seemed to be immune to the extremes in the weather Scotty found difficult to become acclimatized to.
“Not good,” Nguyen said.
“I’m going to have to roll you back over to check you out.” He grabbed the captain’s belt and shoulder and waited.
Nguyen nodded, made a face in preparation for the added pain and let Scotty roll him onto his back.
The pain was severe, but Scotty wasn’t surprised the tough little warrior was able to keep from crying out. As Scotty untied the tails of the combat dressing holding the blood soaked pad to Nguyen’s hip he heard Sergeant Asa Russell’s words: One day you’re a private in an eleven man rifle squad. The next you’re one of the few left alive and you’re in charge—responsible for the lives of others. All that time you are up to your ass in bad guys trying to shoot holes in your ass.
How sure Russell had been the same thing would happen to Scotty and how unlikely the scenario felt to him that night in the Company Orderly Room at Fort Benning.
Nguyen was now Scotty’s responsibility. He might not be able to keep him alive, but without Scotty’s help he surely would die. As he pulled the dressing back from the wound the bleeding continued. Turning its edge back even more, Scotty could see the top of the wound in Nguyen’s leg. What he had guessed might be a round bullet whole in his leg was instead a more ragged hole, longer than wide and deep—to the bone.
Scotty looked more closely and saw not only torn tissue but a deep groove cut into the thigh bone. He guessed Nguyen had not been shot directly. Rather, the round hit the ground before it ricocheted across Nguyen’s upper leg. The impact with the ground itself had distorted or flattened the slug and cut through the tissue like a machete rather than puncturing it. The round had gone in the tissue and out—good news. It meant there was not a bullet still in Nguyen.
Scotty felt only slightly better about dealing with the wound he found in the daylight. Now he had a long list of lesser problems: How was he going to keep the wound from getting infected? How was he going to keep Nguyen’s strength up without food and adequate nourishment? And the worst of all, how was he going to get him to safety and competent medical attention? There was no way Nguyen could walk. Scotty wasn’t even sure he could stand up.
He sat back and wondered what Asa Russell would tell him. He shrugged. He knew what he’d tell him. He’d tell him to figure it out, not sit on his ass and worry about it. It was clearly a case where doing nothing would surely cost Nguyen his life and might get Scotty killed too. Doing something surely couldn’t be much worse.
“How much pain are you in Dai Uy?”
“Is painful. Yes.”
Scotty rummaged around in the aid kit looking for something to help the wounded captain more comfortable. He found three small glass ampules of morphine wrapped in a paper envelope also containing a glass syringe and needle. He also found a tin of Darvon with codeine. He held both up so Nguyen could see them and he pointed at the Darvon.
“Okay,” Scotty said. “Darvon it is. But you know we have the morphine if it gets that bad.”
“Yes,” Nguyen said. He tried to raise himself up on his elbows.
Scotty pulled his canteen, handed him the pills and waited for him to wash them down. Then both waited a few minutes for the Darvon to kick in before Scotty tried to rebandage Nguyen.
Scotty looked at the sun filtering through the trees lighting up the area of the wound itself. He was sure the sunlight wouldn’t hurt the wound and might even help to keep bacteria from growing in the wound. In the brighter light he could see the bone was severely compromised. The ratty edges of the wound were beginning to dry out, the larger ligaments were lacerated but bleeding seemed to be under control. In short, the leg was going to be useless to Nguyen until got treatment to repair the damage. Treatment far beyond Scotty’s first aid skills.
Scotty pulled his map from the cargo pocket on his leg and flopped it open, spinning it to orient it to true north. He knew he just had to assume there was no other rescue effort planned. With no
way to communicate with anyone since their radio had died, Scotty knew they didn’t even have two choices. To stay meant Nguyen’s death. And his own elevated temperature, swollen lymph nodes, aching joints now made him worry how much worse he was going to get. Staying put was not going to work. No, he was sure. His only choice was to get the two of them back to some American or South Vietnamese outpost. He didn’t care if it was a military post or government office. He just had to get them back to civilization.
Nguyen must have realized what Scotty was thinking and shook his head. “You go. Come back.”
“No, sir. I can’t do that. I leave you here without food, water or medical attention you won’t last half the time it would take me to get to help and get back.” Scotty nodded toward Cambodia, still only a stone’s throw away. “Even if you did survive, the VC are going to be coming through this area. It won’t be that long before an infiltrator finds this thicket just like we did.”
He didn’t wait for Nguyen reply. Instead, he decided he’d waited long enough for the pills to kick in and opened another battle dressing to place over Nguyen’s open wound.
He looked at his watch and started planning their day. “Dai Uy, I want you to get some sleep. I’m going to find the shortest path to the next thicket in the direction of the Sugar Mill and we’ll slip out of here tonight.”
He stopped speaking long enough to hold up the map and pointed to a curved line of abandoned farms, tree stands, canals and streams and said, “This is a long and wide swing out of our way, but we might be able to move from point to point, working back to the highway where we can find help.”
“How?”
“I guess I’m going to have carry you.”
“You cannot do,” Nguyen said.
“We don’t have any choice, sir.”
Having removed all of his gear except his ammo, canteens and binoculars, Scotty took black mud marinating in the stagnant water and smeared it on his face, neck and hands to replace the camouflage sticks he had run out of. It smelled disgusting, but Scotty had no option. He couldn’t be seen. It was clearly one of those moments Russell had pounded into him in training: If you can be seen you can be hit. If you can be hit you can be killed.
He made one more check of the sleeping Nguyen’s temperature making sure he wasn’t exposed to too much drying sunlight, picked up his rifle and started out. He knew he had to plan carefully if he hoped to have any success of getting them back to safety without being seen moving across the marshland. It would almost be a cross between hopscotch and chess. They would need to move from one place of concealment to the next and not leave a trail. A tall order, but what else could he do?
It took him several minutes just to move to a spot in the thicket where he could see across the marshland to the east and north. He hoped the map was accurate and there would be another clump of trees close enough for them to move to and rest before moving on again.
Just inches from the edge of the thicket Scotty stopped and listened for any movement. Nothing. Other than the sounds of birds and insects humming and chirping in the reeds it was quiet. This was good news. He had learned early in training wildlife can be a great source of information. When it is completely quiet there’s a good chance the insects and birds are aware of some danger or tension in the area. Hearing noise gave him confidence.
He put his binoculars to his eyes and began a quick and methodical sweep from left to right looking at everything in his view. He needed to make sure no one was watching him before he picked the exact path they would take to get to the next cluster of trees. He was happy to find the terrain actually matched the nine year old map.
His eye caught something unnaturally dark nearly a hundred meters out in the open terrain. He raised his binoculars to focus on whatever it was. It might have been something left behind by the Viet Cong who shot Nguyen, maybe something useful. Cranking the binos into sharp focus he saw it was a crow. A dead crow. It was large and blue-black glossy. Could it be the same crow they had seen so many days earlier? Did they crow fall victim to the random shooting? And was there a mate somewhere waiting for him to return?
Scotty wondered if he and Nguyen would end up dead in some paddy. Or if anyone would ever know. He quickly bristled at feeling sorry for himself, took a deep breath and shook it off. Self-pity was something neither one of them could afford. Of that he was sure.
The companies passed in front of the reviewing stand one at a time in step to the music. As they did, the young Vietnamese captains in command of each company saluted the dignitaries on the reviewing stand.
Pascoe returned the salutes in unison with the generals and felt his chest swelling when the color guard passed with the U.S. and Vietnamese national flags.
The last company passed and the voice of the interpreter came back over the loudspeakers again. “Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the ceremony. The Corps Commander, General Pham, would like to thank you for coming today. A reception is planned in the area immediately behind the bleachers. You are all invited to attend.” With that the sound system clicked off taking with it the hum which had been under every announcement.
Pascoe was unsure of the next move since he had started the day thinking he was only going to a change of command ceremony for General Duong. It never occurred to him the day could have turned out to be so important to him. Without thinking about it, his fingers touched the two ornate pendants hanging from the colorful ribbons of his two new medals.
“Congratulations.”
Pascoe realized General Devlen was standing by him reaching out to shake his hand. “Oh, sir. Yessir. Ah, thank you.” He took the general’s hand for the second time that day and tried to give him a firm and manly shake. “I was completely surprised by all this.”
“Well, you earned them. And we rushed the Silver Star through so too much time wouldn’t elapse between the action and the award. You see, we don’t get too many chances to recognize the service and heroism of our advisors because they don’t command the troops they advise and aren’t in a position to make heroic and difficult decisions as you did.”
Pascoe tried to be humble in his reply. “Well, sir… I didn’t really do all that much. It was General Minh who made all the hard choices out there. Heck, I was more of a passenger in that chopper.”
The general reached over and patted Pascoe on the arm. “Well, you can brush it off if you want, but we feel you deserve the medals. Now, lets go over to the reception and get some refreshments.”
As they walked to the reception area set up behind the bleachers General Devlen turned to Pascoe. “Oh, Colonel, headquarters has classified your sergeant Hayes as MIA.”
“I’m sure that’ll be very upsetting for his family,” Pascoe said. “I hope we can resolve his status one way or the other soon so his family can get some peace of mind.”
“I agree. This was supposed to be an advisory effort and now we have more than a dozen Americans we think are in the hands of the VC. I’m hoping Washington can bring enough pressure on Hanoi to force them to release our people.”
The general stopped at a table topped with champagne glasses, tended by a young Vietnamese girl wearing a beautiful rose colored ao dai. He took a half filled glass from the girl and waited for Pascoe to do the same. Raising the glass, he made a toast. “Here’s to better days ahead and more Vietnamese generals like Minh.”
Pascoe raised his glasses to meet the toast. “I’ll drink to that. I’ll miss him.” He sipped the champagne and tried not to make a face at the truly horrible quality of the Vietnamese wine, which was lukewarm.
“Where do you see your division going from here?” the general asked.
“I guess a lot depends on what General Duong wants to do,” Pascoe replied. “And I don’t know much about him yet.”
General Devlen looked around, making sure they were not overheard. “Well, I do. I think he will need a stronger hand than Minh. He’s not spent much time with troops. He has a long and respected resume as a staff officer
, but command of troops combat operations is going to be something new to him.” He looked Pascoe directly in the eyes. “I expect a lot from you in this. I want to see you lead this man to success and make it look like it was his idea. That will take some finesse, but I’m sure you can do it. Right?”
“Oh, yessir. You can count on me sir,” Pascoe said.
“I’d like to hear how you are planning on doing this soon.”
Pascoe put the glass back on the table and took the chance at springboarding off the general’s instructions to bring up something important to him. He didn’t know when the opportunity would come up again. He carefully picked his words. “General, do you think fleshing out my advisory team will present a problem for your headquarters?”
“Why? What’s the problem?”
“Well, I’m terribly short of manpower in my team and replacements seem to be slow in coming.”
“Short in manpower?” the general was surprised. “I wasn’t aware you were having difficulties.”
“I never got a fully qualified replacement for Caruthers and now he’s gone. His replacement is gone—”
“That’s the youngster who’s MIA?”
“Yessir, Hayes. And there’s still the matter of my replacement. Once you moved me up to be the division’s senior advisor that put a hole where my job was in Operations.” He then took care to make it sound like something other than a complaint. “Of course, I realize how thin you must be. My guess is you are stretched all over with the demands on MACV expanding and the slowness of the replacement pipeline from the States.”
Devlen’s eyebrows knitted in a slight scowl. Then he raised his index finger, his glass still in hand to catch the eye of a large colonel swabbing his forehead with a damp handkerchief a few paces away in the crowd. “Mike? A minute?”
Colonel Mike Wright acknowledged the general, put his own drink down and came over to the General and Pascoe. “Yessir.”